1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a field of cleaning technique for semiconductor wafer, and more particularly relates to an apparatus and method for cleaning semiconductor wafer by means of physical cleaning, such as brush cleaning.
2. The Related Art
During the process of semiconductor devices manufacturing, almost every working procedure involves cleaning, and the higher the integration level of the semiconductor devices is, the more cleaning procedures are needed. In many of the cleaning procedures, as long as one cleaning procedure is not able to meet requirement, the whole batch of chips are scrapped. Therefore, cleaning is very important for manufacture of semiconductor devices.
Contaminants which are produced and adhered to a wafer during manufacturing the semiconductor device mainly include particles, metal contaminants and organic contaminants. At present, a traditional method for removing the contaminants on the wafer is wet cleaning or dry cleaning. Wet cleaning employs chemical solutions or deionized water to rinse the wafer so as to effectively remove the contaminants, while dry cleaning employs gases to remove the contaminants remained on the wafer. Either wet cleaning or dry cleaning mainly relies on chemical reaction to remove the contaminants and doesn't utilize physical force acted on the wafer surface. However, with the structure of the semiconductor devices becoming more complex, the cleaning requirements of the wafer surface accordingly becomes higher and higher. The traditional cleaning apparatus and method no longer meet process requirement. Therefore, an improved apparatus and method for cleaning semiconductor wafer need to be created out to meet the demands of the development of the semiconductor technology.